Film Screening
December 18, 2009, 7:30pm
Leslie Thornton’s lush, complex film and video works explore the mechanisms of desire and meaning, while probing past the boundaries of language and narrative conventions. Resisting easy categorization, Thornton's works are steeped in theoretical portent and filled with rich and intuitive imagery, experimental narratives crossing science fiction, ethnographic, and documentary forms.
In preparation for the arrival of her early films on UbuWeb, Thornton presents a screening of original 16mm and digital transfers, including a newly restored version of her seminal Peggy and Fred In Hell. For the occasion, her work will be uploaded and launched on UbuWeb during the show, and some titles will be shown comparatively, on both old and new formats.
I think of the web as sprawl. What if the internet was just Ubu, a place of treasures, of self-contained works with shape and history? I want to see these old films show up online, whispers of another sense of space.
– LT
Presented with UbuWeb and introduced by Kenneth Goldsmith
A conversation between Thornton and artist Seth Price follows the screening.
Titles include:
X-TRACTS, 16mm, 1975, 9 mins
All Right You Guys, 16mm, 1976, 16 mins
Jennifer, Where Are You?, 16mm, 1981, 10 mins
Oh, China, Oh, 16mm, 1983, 3 mins
Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue, 16mm, 1985, 21 mins
She Had He So He Do He To Her, 16mm, 1987, 5 mins
